Sunday, March 14, 2010

Dispatch from Tobacco Road

The ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament returned to Greensboro this past weekend. I would have preferred a more exotic location, but the hoops purists were delighted to be in the Greensboro Coliseum. (The pomegranate martini at the Liberty Oak restaurant was pretty exotic, though.)

I drove to Greensboro 4x - on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (I’m embarrassed by my carbon footprint.) I wasn’t planning to be so diligent in my attendance, but our NC Wolfpack upset Clemson on Thursday…and Florida State on Friday…to make the semifinals on Saturday. Then, the Pack lost to Ga. Tech by three points, but it was a sweet run. Check out the Mark McIntyre slideshow at gopack.com.

Who do you think people were watching? The former ACC superstars in attendance, celebrity coaches, Dickie V, politicians, CEOs? Wrong!

The most watched, most photographed celeb was ESPN reporter, Erin Andrews. She was accompanied by her partner from Dancing with the Stars, Maksim Chmerkovskiy. They were courtside all weekend. Every fan in the Greensboro Coliseum with a camera phone snapped their photo.

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I'm VP of the Sports Group at Capitol Broadcasting Co. My office is in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park - a great place to work. (And wonderfully distracting!)

CBC owns the Bulls, operates four sports-talk radio stations in Raleigh and wralSPORTSfan.com. Our radio brands are The Fan, Buzz Sports Radio, The Ticket and ESPN Deportes. We are a partner with Learfield Sports at Wolfpack Sports Properties, and our TV stations connect viewers with NBC, Fox and ACC sports. Our radio stations are the RDU flagships for NC State, Duke Univ, the NHL Carolina Hurricanes and the Bulls.

We even built a basketball court at our American Tobacco complex in Durham and a play area for grown-ups! There's a brewery in the ballpark, too. It's work. It's play. I can't always tell the difference!?!